Friday, March 14, 2014

Fuel Reduction Foolishness......

The Victorian government has decided that they start fuel reduction burning again. This can't be fair dinkum. They are even going to burn in the areas that were already burnt? Where wildlife have already been lost or managed to get away and survive and are now in areas where there is food and shelter they can use. So the DEPI are going to burn that food source and shelter and make certain that wildlife will do it really hard and any that need some time to recover almost certainly die.

One wonders where these people who run these departments get their ideas. Maybe from some tunnel visioned, biased research grants the government has supplied. Which like most research is directed and channelled in a certain way to ensure that the actual effects of the natural world don't get in the way of the desirable result.

Fuel reduction burns further than 10 kilometres from the boundary of main population centres is in fact species genocide. However, that is the aim of the Victorian government at any rate.

The wildlife of this state are a thorn in the side of the current state government. They can't log the whole state and turn it into a virtual desert so they can sell off some of the most valuable timber in the world at a bargain price and reduced to its lowest common denominator, wood chips.

The voting public seem to have very little consideration for the states wildlife. The general public vote hoping to maintain their job security. It's not going to happen. Jobs are never going to be secure again, and neither is a pay packet or a pension or anything else that was once relied upon to make people go into massive debt and become slaves to forces they never thought were anything but benign, because they were applied to others until the circumstances changed. Not themselves. They were right Jack, so who cared about the rest. Donating a little of what they could spare makes the general public feel virtuous and means they don't have to stand up and be counted. No one was giving anything more than that. Charity for most people is giving what they have spare and salving their conscience.

So when the state government uses fire as a fear element to be able to do what they want with the forested areas of the state, they realise the people who live in cities are not going to donate something that they can without any real cost. Their voice to have fuel reduction burning, out in the forested areas stopped. Think about it.

Even if fuel reduction burning worked. By halting fire in the far reaches of the forest, the last bastion of all Victoria’s wildlife, how does that help the people in the cities, towns and smaller population centres? It doesn't. The only areas that should have any protection is no more than 10 kilometres from the boundary of every city and town, and the best protection is a wall of water, created by infrastructure that only even needs to be put in place once and will not cost bucket loads of money to maintain.

Each year the Victorian government uses fuel reduction burning to reduce both numbers and species of wildlife that are hindering their efforts to denude the country it controls within the state boundaries. If the animals who live in the areas of the special places that have been saved in the state are gone. These special places can be plundered. Though it won't create many, if any jobs, rather make those already wealthy even more so. The Victorian government circus puts a positive spin on it and convinces the gullible voting public that they are being looked after and making their jobs and homes secure.

I suppose if you read about what the Victorian government is doing in a comic, you would think such stupidity could only be depicted in that sort of forum. But we see it happening, here, now, in real life and still people vote for governments that promise to help with something that they have jettisoned in reality, but appear to be doing, even as jobs and fire security is diminished.

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About Us

The Snug Wildlife Shelter is dedicated to the care and succour of orphaned and injured Australian native animals, preserving them in their natural state and returning them to the habitat to which they belong and which is theirs by heritage much stronger and binding than our own. The aim is to highlight the plight of and appreciation of the practical and intrinsic value of Australia's native animals in this modern world. We are in the process of learning how to live in harmony and share the living space which belongs to other creatures.